Resources:

Editor’s note: Product tours are immensely helpful for user retention and minimizing bounce rates – often improving sales conversions 20-100% – but they can also be frustrating and eat up valuable time.

Evan Chen is a software developer who experienced this problem and did something about it, developing a terrific app for taking the pain out of creating and managing product tours. In this post he shares with us what he has learned as well as a code to get a free beta invite to his new app, Taurus.

Everyone that lives a work life on a table mostly using a computer should at some point realize that this workspace is where we spend a good amount of our lives and we that in mind we should make the best out of it.

To stay away from a high stress environment is necessary to have good workspace, but What’s a good workspace? A good workspace is the one that fits you best, that solves your problems all in one place whether you have a tiny little space next to your bed or a big office with a beautiful view. Here you will see some workspace display and learn some tips on how to make the best of the workspace you have to make your work more fluent and dynamic.

The price of Adobe software can really put the pressure on both experienced and beginner creatives, lets take a look at some of the best free alternatives to popular Adobe software.

At the time of writing, the newest version of the Adobe master suite is priced at a wallet-busting $2,499, a lot for an aspiring web or graphic designer. For newcomers to the sector especially, it’s easy to think that the Adobe products on offer are the only industry-standard pieces of software actually available when infact, there are many different free alternatives to some of the main elements of the creative suite.

Often times we only learn the CSS strategies we need to as we go through new projects. However, we should study new strategies in our spare time as well. This way, we can discover new and more efficient methods of getting things done for the future.

I hope it doesn’t come as a big surprise that Mozilla Firefox is easily the most desirable browser for web designers and developers, but if it does, you’re in for a quite a treat!

So why does Firefox have a firm grip on all of the internet geeks out there? The answer is quite simple – add-ons. Downloadable add-ons can make your design and/or developing experience much more efficient and fun, and while there are thousands of add-ons available for nearly any situation, there are some that are truly geared towards web designers and developers.

Below, we’ll go over 10 of the hottest add-ons for web designers and developers.

1. Web Developer 1.1.6

Without a doubt, Web Developer should be on every Firefox “top add-ons” list. I’m sure most developers reading this will nod their head in agreement when I say, “What did we do before this came out?”

The Web Developer add-on adds a nice menu and toolbar to Firefox that is full of wonderful web developing tools to make your life easier. Web Developer allows you to do anything from disabling certain features on a page (like JavaScript, page colors, etc…) to editing the CSS of any webpage in real time. Features like that allow you to save all sorts of time, and in the design/development world, time is most definitely money. Web Developer is an absolute must-have.

2. Firebug

Another heavy hitter in the developer’s arsenal, Firebug is another one of those add-ons that you simply can’t live without. Firebug allows you to do things like “find HTML elements buried deep in the page”, and pretty much hands over a golden plate of information at your fingertips.

With Firebug, you can edit and debug HTML, JavaScript, and CSS in real time and figure out why you’re getting that pesky error message. You can also monitor network activity (to figure out why your page is taking so long to load), visualize CSS metrics (so that you can find out why CSS boxes aren’t lining up like they should be), and so much more. There are also a ton of different extensions for Firebug that are constantly being developed.

3. ColorZilla 2.0.2

This is such a handy little add-on that so many different types of users could find useful. How many times have you been on a particular site and wondered exactly what color they used for a certain text or element on their page? Probably hundreds of times, right?

Now, with the click of a button you can easily grab the RGB, hex, and even get information about DOM elements on the fly. ColorZilla also gives you the ability to zoom the page and measure the distance between any two points on the page you’re viewing. That’s just awesome.

4. ScreenGrab 0.96.1

Think about how many times in your web development life that you’ve hit the “print screen” button. Exactly. Instead of doing things the old school way, someone was smart enough to launch a free way to quickly and easily grab a screenshot of an entire page, a specific section of a page, the entire window you’re looking at, and a few other options.

ScreenGrab will remind you of SnagIt, only you don’t have to shell out any cash for it and it works just as well. I don’t think anyone would argue that this is another standard add-on that should be in every developer and designer’s browser.

5. LinkChecker 0.6.3

Even the best of the best screw up the occasional link on a page. That’s why a genius by the name of Kevin Freitas built the simple, yet very useful LinkChecker add-on for Firefox. It will check if a link is valid or not, and this is easily one of those “use every day” type of add-ons that will be another valuable tool in your collection.

6. Window Resizer 1.0

Testing your new site or project in several different screen sizes is crucial to your process. This simple add-on allows you to do just that. Window Resizer supports 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024 and 1600×1200 resolutions. Talk about convenient!

(Note: Similar to IE View is Safari View. This is another one worth downloading.)

8. Dummy Lipsum 2.3.0

For the thousands of times you’ve copied and pasted “Lorem Ipsum” dummy text for all of your past projects, you’ll have wished you found Dummy Lipsum a lot sooner! This awesome add-on is a no-brainer for any designer or developer.

With a few clicks, you can easily generate a page full of space filler text, and you even have the option of including punctuation, showing or not showing html tags, and whether you want to start it with the infamous “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…” You can also have it generate the text in the form of a paragraph, words, bytes, or even a list!

9. HTML Validator 0.8.5.6

Instead of using a separate tool or website to validate HTML on a page, you can download this nifty little add-on which adds HTML validation inside of Firefox.

HTML Validator shows you the number of errors of a HTML page seen in an icon on the status bar when you’re browsing, which makes the process of spotting errors extremely fast and easy. While some other add-ons include this already, this is a nice hands free way to spot errors on the fly.

10. MeasureIt 0.3.8

I’m sure there have been countless times where you quickly needed the measurements of how large an image was, or how many thumbnails you could fit into one box, etc…

With MeasureIt, you can quickly and easily draw out a ruler to get the measurement (in pixels, width and height) of anything on a webpage. MeasureIt is another awesome tool for any designer to add to their Firefox browser, as it will surely speed up the process.

Wrapping Up

10 super efficient Firefox add-ons that should allow you to shave some time off of your many projects. I know there is a mess of additional helpful add-ons for designers and developers, but the 10 above are the ones that seem to be the staples among the thousands of others available.

Here are five more add-ons worth mentioning (just in case you can’t get enough):

FireFTP – Instead of opening an external FTP for site updates, this is easier.

Font Finder – Quickly show all the properties of selected text on a page.

Colorblind Simulator – Experimental add-on that simulates what a page looks like to colorblind people. Since 10% of the population is colorblind, this is smart!

All participants have the choice of their WordPress theme being featured on Webitect during and after the contest, and available for download. As a benefit, any theme is allowed to host a personal link to your own blog or website.

jQuery (a friendly JavaScript library) seems to be substatially popular among programmers, and even non-programmers. It’s capability to add more visual appeal and dynamic solutions to websites makes it ideal for all webmasters.

I haven’t been able to continue the jQuery tutorials on Webitect at a pace I originally would’ve liked to, so I’m going to share 30 jQuery tutorials that are easy to follow, and most of which have helped me get started. First, let’s do a quick review on what jQuery is, for those who are unaware.

Every web developer, or even aspiring web developer needs a set of tools that will help them keep up with the fast-pace coding world. Some are your own resources, while others are a must-have for every developer. Below are the seven things any web developer would absolutely need to be successful.

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